Julia Roberts and Alec Baldwin Join The Normal Heart

Julia Roberts, Alec Baldwin, Matt Bomer and Jim Parsons have joined Ryan Murphy’s (“American Horror Story,” Eat Pray Love, “Glee”) next film, an adaptation of Larry Kramer’s semi-autobiographical play The Normal Heart, says The Hollywood Reporter. The film is being produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company. The play is described as follows:

“The Normal Heart” is the explosive drama about our most terrifying and troubling medical crisis today: the AIDS epidemic. It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom – an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.”

Mark Ruffalo will play the lead character Ned Weeks. Roberts plays Emma Brookner, “a wheel-chair bound doctor who is one of the only doctors in New York talking the new disease seriously.” Baldwin will play Weeks’ brother, “a lawyer having a hard time dealing with his sibling’s sexuality.” Bomer’s character is Felix Turner, “a gay fashion journalist who becomes Weeks boyfriend and tragically contracts the disease,” while Parsons is reprising his Broadway version of “a Southerner who is a gay activist and part of a gay mens health crisis group.”